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Pidgins and
Creoles
“A language is a dialect
with an army and a navy,
but my accent often turns
out to be your dialect”
(McCrum et al. 1986)
Why study pidgins and creoles?
Pidgins and creoles complicate the
everyday idea of what a language is,
what a dialect is, and where one
language stops and another begins.
What is a pidgin?
A pidgin is a contact language used between two
groups of people who want to be able to
understand each other but do not have a language
in common
(Winford 2003)
Russenorsk
The vocabulary of Russenorsk is almost all
nouns (thing words), verbs (action words)
and a few adjectives (descriptors)
There are only two pronouns, moja
(I/me/us/we) and tvoja (you)
The sounds of Russenorsk consist of only
the sounds that Russian and Norwegian
have in common
The grammar of Russenorsk
• Like all pidgins, it doesn’t use grammatical
markers on the words, like “-ed” for past, or “-s”
for plural
which means:
but
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=vSHrbGktpl4
Example of spoken creole (again)
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=vSHrbGktpl4
The rhythms of creole
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=vSHrbGktpl4